At Google, people are joining six-month wait lists for a class on it. Chade-Meng Tan, the engineer who founded the class, says that emotional intelligence is what differentiates one tech whiz from another.

"Everybody knows this [emotional intelligence] thing is good for their career," Meng said. "And every company knows that if their people have [it], they're gonna make a shitload of money."

Still, there's lots of confusion about what emotional intelligence is.